Parent responses to their sexual and gender minority children: Implications for parent-focused supportive interventions.

Abstract

Parental acceptance is a robust protective mechanism against poor mental health in sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth. Yet, little work has examined how parent-focused interventions could increase parental support of SGM youth while simultaneously reducing parental rejection. To inform parenting intervention content and strategies for parental engagement in such interventions, this mixed-methods study examined how non-SGM parents of SGM youth (N = 205) qualitatively described their relationship with their SGM child and quantitatively rated their interest, willingness, and preferences regarding receiving interventions to increase their support for their SGM child. Using an open-ended question in which parents described their relationship with their child, we examined how both the content (i.e., themes) and the structure (i.e., word usage) of responses differed among parent subgroups varying in their reactions to their child's SGM identity (i.e., positive/affirming, mixed, negative). Next, we quantified parents' interest, willingness, and preferences in parenting interventions stratified by parent subgroups. Results identified strong thematic and structural differences between parent subgroups in how they described the parent-child relationship. Intervention interest, willingness, and preferences also differed between parent subgroups. For example, parents who responded negatively to their child's SGM identity expressed greater interest in in-person interventions lasting four or more sessions, while parents with mixed or positive responses indicated a preference for an online, self-paced video intervention format. These findings suggest that interventions to enhance parental support of their SGM children might be most successful when tailored, in terms of content, format, and modality, to their degree of support for their SGM child. Public Significance StatementThis article investigates how parents' descriptions of their relationships with their SGM children, as well as their preferences for SGM-affirmative parenting intervention content, format, and modality, might inform how to most effectively develop such interventions to increase their support for their SGM children. By increasing parental support, such interventions can potentially buffer SGM youth against the negative mental health effects of minority stress.

Stigma and anxiety and depressive symptoms in parents of sexual and gender minority youth.

“…Lower Akaike Information Criteria and Bayesian Information Criteria and higher R-squared values indicated that, for both anxiety and depression, Step 3 models (with all Stigma Experiences subscales added together with covariates) were the optimally fitting models. There was no evidence of multicollinearity based on an eigensystem analysis of covariance comparison (Belsley et al, 1980;Schreiber-Gregory, 2017).…”

“…The SPACES study was approved by the University of Maryland Institutional Review Board. Previous research drawing upon the SPACES study sample has reported upon parents’ explicit and implicit acceptance and rejection toward their SGM child and associations with child mental health (Clark et al, 2022; Hubachek et al, 2023) as well as parents’ perspectives on supportive intervention content for parents of SGM youth (Seager van Dyk et al, 2022).…”

The effects of family support and smartphone-derived homestay on daily mood and depression among sexual and gender minority adolescents.

“…Taken together, our findings underscore the pressing need for targeted interventions for SGM youth, who are at increased risk for depression and other mental health issues. Family support emerged as a critical variable that is likely to influence clinical- and mood-related outcomes, underscoring the well-researched need for family-based interventions in bolstering SGM youth mental health (Newcomb et al, 2019; Seager van Dyk et al, 2024). Furthermore, the SGM-specific link between low family support, increased homestay, and lower mood underscores the need for designing and testing interventions that are accessible from within potentially nonaffirming home environments, such as online support programs (Bauermeister et al, 2022; Egan et al, 2021; Lucassen et al, 2015).…”